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Yes Mr. O’Reilly, let’s look at some stats

FOX “News” commentator Bill O’Reilly has made a career out of being an obnoxious, racist, homophobic, transphobic, sexist, misogynistic bigot (an extremely lucrative career). The highly rated conservative pundit (who, I am shocked to find out, is only #43 in Iris Vander Pluym’sAbattoir; what’s an asshole like O’Reilly gotta do to move up the list?!) regularly engages in inflammatory rhetoric that’s clearly designed to gin up his conservative viewership. If there was a personification of the phrase ‘punching down‘, it would probably look like Bill O’Reilly. I find the man so repellent that I don’t even want to hear his voice. I don’t know how the folks over at Right Wing Watch can stand it (and O’Reilly is far from the only craptastic conservative they report on). Thankfully, listening to his voice is not necessary for me to learn the latest awful thinghe’s said. For that, I have but to turn to Raw Story:

Social activist Michael Meyers called Bill O’Reilly and his network out to his face on Monday, accusing Fox News of engaging in a pattern of demonizing black men.

“I’m not doing that, and I’m going to continue to report the truth,” replied O’Reilly, who has previously blamed rap music and singer Beyoncé for social issues.

The truth Mr. O’Reilly? You’re going to “continue reporting the truth”? When the fuck did you start?

I always figured Bill O’Reilly followed one commandment. And it’s not ‘to be truthful’.

Now, some might think “Super Big Daddy Shoop, aren’t you exaggerating? After all, no one can go through their entire life without telling the truth on multiple occasions.” To which I’d say “shaddup!” To be slightly more serious-yes, I’m exaggerating to a degree. Everyone tells the truth throughout their lives. From mundane truths to more significant ones. Moreover, everyone lies-from mundane lies to more significant ones. For someone like Bill O’Reilly, however, who has made a career out of being a journalist, it is incredibly important to speak as truthfully as possible on the subjects one reports on. Unfortunately, as a journalist, O’Reilly has told more lies than I’ve taken shits in my life. Ok. Maybe not that much. But close. Don’t believe me? Go read Killing Truth, a new book recently released by Media Matters For America (you can read it online). Here are a few of the lies covered in the book:

O’Reilly claimed he reported from a war zone in the Falklands; the closest he got to that conflict was Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital, a thousand miles away.

O’Reilly claimed he witnessed civilians get killed during a protest in Buenos Aires; other reporters and a historian say no such deaths occurred.

O’Reilly claimed he was on the doorstep of a figure connected to President Kennedy’s assassination when that man committed suicide; this is debunked by significant evidence, including O’Reilly’s own taped statement from the time.

O’Reilly claimed he saw nuns get shot in the head in El Salvador; he later acknowledged he had only seen photos of the deceased.

O’Reilly has told two different stories about his El Salvador reporting trip; in one he says he witnessed a firefight, but in the other he makes no mention of the dramatic events.

O’Reilly claimed to have seen terror attacks in Northern Ireland; he later admitted he had only seen photos of those events.

O’Reilly claimed to have been attacked by protestors while reporting for Inside Edition during the 1992 Los Angeles riots; this was subsequently disputed by six of his former colleagues.

What’s that? Still not enough to show that he’s a professional liar? How about this long list o’ lies compiled by the Daily Dot (99 of them to be exact). Here are 20:

O’Reilly claimed that Hillary Clinton didn’t go to a single funeral or memorial service of a 9/11 victim. Not true. Further, as senator of New York at the time, Clinton took on the causes of first responders and won the endorsement of two NYC firefighters unions for her support.

O’Reilly said that illegal immigrants were “biological weapons” that killed more people than 9/11. Shortly thereafter, he claimed he never said that.

Talking about Fox’s biases, O’Reilly said, “There is no talking points. There is no marching order. It doesn’t exist.” Go watch Outfoxed.

He said Fox News has more liberals than conservatives on air. Well, that flies in the face of common sense—and this study from around the same time O’Reilly made that assertion. Newer studies aren’t much kinder.

One of O’Reilly’s signature moments was screaming at the son of a 9/11 victim on air and then repeatedly claiming the son, Jeremy Glick, was a 9/11 truther who blamed America for the attacks. In fact, Glick said he believed that American support for the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s laid the groundwork for Al Qaeda. There’s a difference, and Glick was right.

O’Reilly said Bush didn’t oppose the creation of the 9/11 commission. He did.

O’Reilly likes to say there is a War on Christmas. To support that, he claimed red and green clothes—Christmas colors—had been banned by a public school in Texas run by “fascism.” That was not true.

Talking about the War on Christmas, O’Reilly claimed Circuit City was owned by Indians. It was never owned by Indians.

Did someone say War on Christmas? O’Reilly claimed that a public school changed the lyrics to “Silent Night” in order to secularize it. Actually, it was an entirely new song written on the old tune, changed by the former president of Ronald Reagan’s church and performed in churches around the country.

O’Reilly said Best Buy banned the phrase “Merry Christmas.” They didn’t.

O’Reilly claimed the income tax originated with Karl Marx. Actually, it existed before Marx was born.

During the Bush years, O’Reilly said the Clinton tax rates were higher than at any point since World War II. That’s wrong; taxes had been higher numerous times throughout the latter half of the 20th century.

O’Reilly claimed Jane Fonda turned notes smuggled by U.S. prisoners of war over to the Vietnamese. False.

In 2005, O’Reilly said the Bush administration was not engaging in torture. He pointed to a State Department report on human rights that criticized torture—except in the U.S. In any event, we can be sure now that torture took place.

In 2006, O’Reilly said there was no evidence the U.S. used electric shock torture. There was evidence then, and there is evidence now.

O’Reilly also claimed that Geneva Convention protections apply only to uniformed soldiers fighting for a recognized country, as opposed to stateless terrorists. That’s not true. The Geneva Convention applies to everyone.

When O’Reilly gets things wrong, he’s exceptional at talking about how right he is. When he claimed federal housing assistance rose 1,400 percent from Clinton to Bush, he was off by 1,378 percent. When he was called out on it, he said “these are hard numbers.”

In 1986, Dick Cheney voted against a resolution calling to free Nelson Mandela from prison. Cheney has repeatedly said it’s because Mandela ran a terrorist operation, but O’Reilly has contradicted Cheney, saying that vote was cast in order to protect poor South Africans from sanctions.

One of O’Reilly’s favorite targets is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He’s famously stated that the ACLU supports pedophiles and a child’s “constitutional right to have sex with adults.” This is not at all what the ACLU does.

O’Reilly claimed that the “liberal” Boston Globe didn’t cover the rape of a 9-year-old girl. They did.

Go ahead-read the rest. I’ll wait.

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All done? Good. Surely it’s apparent by now that Bill O’Reilly is a lying liar who likes to lie. And he’s a belligerent bloviating blowhard. With that established, let’s move on.

“If true be told, crime is an individual act; it’s an individual thing. Crime is not a racial group or a skin color,” Meyers wrote. “In this regard, there is no such thing as ‘the black male’ much less a ‘black male problem’ in America any more than there is or once was an ‘Italian male problem’ or an ‘Irish male problem,’ when society casually stereotyped and blamed ‘the’ Italian and Irish communities for organized crime and street gangsterism.”

However, O’Reilly said on Monday, Meyers’ argument contained a “fundamental mistake,” arguing that “Muslim extremists” could only be stopped by law-abiding Muslims, because “the jihad” was the sole province of that community. Similarly, the Italian mafia and Irish terrorists were neutralized from within their own communities.

“You have to look at the statistics of people committing anti-social acts and find out where these acts are occurring and why they’re occurring,” the Factor host told Meyers.

Oh, so you want to talk facts and stats, eh? How about we talk about the problem of right-wing violence in this country:

April 17, 2012
Joseph Benjamin Thomas and Samuel James Johnson of Mendota Heights, Minn., are indicted on federal weapons and drug charges after a probe of their alleged plans to create an “Aryan Liberation Movement” and attack minorities, leftists and government officials. Prosecutors say Thomas planned to attack the Mexican consulate in St. Paul with a truck loaded with flaming barrels of oil and gasoline. Johnson, a former leader of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement with prior convictions for armed crimes, was scouting for a training compound in Illinois or Minnesota and seeking to recruit others into his group, court papers say. In the end, Johnson pleads guilty in 2012 to being a felon in possession of weapons and is sentenced to 15 years in prison. Thomas pleads to intent to distribute 50 grams of methamphetamine. In April 2013, he is sentenced to 10 years in prison.

June 17, 2012Anson Chi, 33, is seriously injured when he detonates a bomb in an effort to destroy an Atmos Energy natural gas pipeline in Plano, Texas. Chi is an avid tax protester who has posted numerous videos, statements and rants on the Internet about the alleged evils of the Federal Reserve, the IRS, President Obama and the government. He had been a fugitive since 2009, when he violated probation in California on a weapons charge. Chi pleads guilty in 2013 to possessing an unregistered explosive and malicious use of an explosive, and is sentenced to 22 years in prison.

August 5, 2012
Neo-Nazi skinhead Wade Michael Page, 40, opens fire with a 9 mm handgun at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., killing six and critically wounding three, including a police officer. Wounded by police, Page then shoots and kills himself at the scene. A U.S. Army veteran who was discharged in 1998 for “patterns of misconduct,” Page was a “patched” member of the Northern Hammerskins, a chapter of the Hammerskin Nation, a violent, racist skinhead group. He was also a fixture on the white power music scene who played in the band End Apathy and several others.

August 16, 2012Seven people with ties to the antigovernment “sovereign citizens” movement allegedly ambush and murder Louisiana sheriff’s deputies Brandon Nielsen, 34, and Jeremy Triche, 27. The attack comes in a trailer park near New Orleans, where the deputies pursued suspects following the shooting and wounding of another deputy working as an off-duty security guard at an oil refinery. Those arrested include the group’s leader, Terry Lyn Smith, 44, Smith’s wife, Chanel Skains, and his sons, Derrik Smith and Brian Smith. Others are Brittany Keith, Kyle David Joekel and Teniecha Bright. Brian Smith is charged with first-degree murder and the others with related charges. The group, which traveled the country doing construction work, possess a stockpile of weapons. Its members have outstanding warrants in Nebraska, Tennessee and Louisiana.

September 4, 2012
Christopher Lacy, 36, shoots California Highway Patrol officer Kenyon Youngstrom at close range after the officer stops Lacy’s vehicle, which had an obstructed license plate, on I-680 near Alamo. Lacy is fatally shot by another trooper, and Youngstrom dies the next day. An investigation into Lacy’s background reveals a large amount of antigovernment “sovereign citizens” literature on several computers at his home.

December 21, 2012FBI agents arrest Richard Schmidt, the owner of a sporting goods store in Bowling Green, Ohio, for trafficking in counterfeit goods and discover a cache of 18 weapons in his home and store, including AR-15 assault rifles, 9 mm and Sig Sauer pistols and shotguns, and more than 40,000 rounds of ammunition. Schmidt is unable to own the weapons legally because he is a felon who served 13 years for murdering a Latino man and wounding two others in a 1989 traffic dispute. Officials also find evidence of Schmidt’s neo-Nazi views, including video and Nazi paraphernalia, and the Anti-Defamation League identifies him as a longtime member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance. Authorities also discover a notebook they say Schmidt was using to track Detroit-area Jewish and African-American leaders, apparently as a prelude to some kind of attack. Schmidt is indicted in Toledo in January 2013 on three federal counts of possessing illegal firearms, body armor and ammunition, and one count of trafficking in counterfeit goods. He pleads guilty in July 2013 to violating federal firearms laws and is sentenced in December to nearly six years in prison.

June 18, 2013Glendon Scott Crawford, 49, and Eric J. Feight, 54, are arrested in upstate New York after a yearlong investigation and charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists for use of a weapon of mass destruction. Crawford is a member of the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and an industrial mechanic with General Electric; Feight is an outside contractor for GE with engineering skills. Officials say the two men, who call themselves “The Guild,” are well along the way toward building a truck-borne radiation weapon could be turned on remotely and that they hoped to use in the mass murder of Muslims and others. Crawford, who was said to be angry at President Obama, allegedly referred to the device as “Hiroshima on a light switch.” The men are arrested after unsuccessfully seeking funding from Jewish groups and the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. In January 2014, Crawford is indicted for conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction and related charges, while his alleged accomplice is reportedly in talks about a plea agreement that would involve testifying against Crawford.

Aug. 18, 2013David Allen Brutsche, 42, and a woman described as Brutsche’s roommate, Devon Campbell Newman, 67, are arrested in Las Vegas after a months-long investigation into an alleged plot to kidnap and execute police officers. Both Brutsche, a convicted felon and registered sex offender, and Newman consider themselves “sovereign citizens” and have conducted recruiting seminars on sovereign ideology, officials say. Authorities say they intended to kidnap a police officer at random, detain the officer in a crude jail in a vacant house, “try” the officer in a “common-law” court, then execute the officer. The two are charged with felony conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit kidnapping, and attempted kidnapping. Newman pleads guilty in December 2013 to conspiracy to commit false imprisonment, a misdemeanor, and is sentenced to a year of probation and ordered to have no contact with Brutsche. Brutsche, who renounces sovereign citizen ideology during court proceedings, pleads guilty in February 2014 to conspiracy to kidnap police officers and receives five years’ probation. In a separate case involving failure to register as a sex offender, he receives 188 days in jail in addition to time served.

March 27, 2014Robert James Talbot Jr., 38, is arrested in Katy, Texas, by FBI agents who say he was about to rob an armored car. He is alleged to have been plotting to use C-4 explosives and weapons to rob banks and armored cars, blow up government buildings and mosques, and kill police officers. Prosecutors say he is behind a Facebook page called “American Insurgent Movement,” on which he posted antigovernment screeds, called for violence against public officials, and ranted about Muslims and LGBT people. He used the page to attempt to persuade others to join his cause. Talbot faces federal charges of attempted interference with commerce by robbery, solicitation to commit a crime of violence and possession of an explosive material. The FBI opened an investigation into his activities in August 2013 after learning of his alleged desire to recruit others into terrorist activities. Talbot pleads guilty to all charges on Oct. 3, 2014. He faces up to 30 years in prison and $375,000 in fines.

April 13, 2014Frazier Glenn Miller (aka Frazier Glenn Cross), 73, a longtime racist and anti-Semite, is arrested after a gunman opens fire at a Jewish community center and a Jewish retirement community in Overland Park, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City. Three people are killed, including a 14-year-old Eagle Scout and his grandfather. Miller, a retired Army veteran and Green Beret, is the founder and former leader of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Patriot Party, which he ran as paramilitary organizations in the 1980s. He was successfully sued by the SPLC for operating an illegal paramilitary organization and for using intimidation tactics against African Americans. Miller went underground in 1987 after he violated the court settlement and was convicted on criminal contempt charges. He was caught and served three years in federal prison on weapons charges in connection with plans to commit robberies and assassinate SPLC founder Morris Dees. As part of a plea deal, he testified against other Klan members in a 1988 sedition trial.

June 8, 2014Jerad Miller, 31, and his wife, Amanda, 22, enter a pizza restaurant in Las Vegas, Nev., where two police officers are eating lunch. Jerad Miller fatally shoots officer Igor Soldo, 31. As his partner, Alyn Beck, 41, tries to react, Miller shoots him in the throat, then both Millers shoot Beck several times. The pair leave a swastika and a Gadsden flag on Beck’s body. The yellow flag, a symbol used by the antigovernment “Patriot” movement, features a coiled snake with the words “Don’t Tread On Me.” On Soldo’s body, they place a note: “This is the start of the revolution.” The couple leave the restaurant and walk to a nearby Walmart store, where Amanda Miller shoots and kills Joseph Wilcox, 31, before the Millers barricade themselves in the back of the store. Jerad is shot to death by police, and Amanda kills herself. The couple held strong antigovernment views. Jerad Miller’s Facebook page contained calls to impeach President Obama as well as statements about conspiracy theories popular among Patriot groups. Weeks earlier, the pair had been present at the Cliven Bundy ranch in Nevada, where militias had gathered in an armed standoff with the federal Bureau of Land Management over a grazing fee dispute. The Millers perceived law enforcement as “oppressors” and reportedly told neighbors they planned to kill police officers.

November 28, 2014Armed with a .22-caliber rifle and an assault rifle, Larry Steve McQuilliams, 49, fires more than 100 rounds at a police station, a Mexican consulate, a federal courthouse and a bank in downtown Austin, Texas, during the pre-dawn hours. He also tries to set the consulate on fire before he is shot dead by police. No one is hurt in the attack, which causes extensive damage to the buildings. In a rental van, police find multiple propane cans fashioned into homemade bombs and a map of 34 targets, including two churches. They also find Vigilantes of Christendom. The 1990 book inspired a white supremacist doctrine known as Phineas Priesthood, which finds divine justification for violence against those seen by such “priests” as enemies of God. The Austin police chief describes McQuilliams, a felon, as a “homegrown American terrorist trying to terrorize our people” and says a note found in the book “discusses his rank as a priest in his fight against anti-God people.” Statements made in police interviews also tie him to ultra-conservative groups with anti-Semitic, anti-LGBT and racist views.

That’s just a dozen. There’s plenty more where that came from. In fact, the ACLU has documented over 100 cases of homegrown, right-wing terror plots and conspiracies since 1995. What’s going on here Bill? Why is there so much right-wing violence in the United States? Why are these people so up in arms that they’re willing to kill others to achieve their goals? What could possibly drive these people to such extremes? Why do these people harbor such loathsome views? Why does the very real threat of right-wing violence receive much less attention than Islamic extremists? Why did the number of anti-government “Patriot” movement groups increase by more than 755% during President Obama’s tenure? And why are so many of these terrorists angry white men? I know you’re terribly concerned about “black on black” violence (speaking of which, if anyone is curious about the history of this myth, check out this article), but where is your concern for “white on white” violence? These statistics are troubling, yet you don’t appear terribly concerned about them. Why is that?

Silly me. I understand now why you’re not concerned with these statistics.

You’re not concerned with those violent actions because you’re a racist douchebag who uses deliberately inflammatory rhetoric to deepen the racial tensions in this country. Now that I’m on to your game, kindly Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

4 thoughts on “Yes Mr. O’Reilly, let’s look at some stats”

Since 1993, eight clinic workers – including four doctors, two clinic employees, a clinic escort, and a security guard – have been murdered in the United States. Seventeen attempted murders have also occurred since 1991. In fact, opponents of choice have directed more than 6,800 reported acts of violence against abortion providers since 1977, including bombings, arsons, death threats, bioterrorism threats, and assaults, as well as more than 188,000 reported acts of disruption, including bomb threats, hate mail, and harassing calls.

Why does the very real threat of right-wing violence receive much less attention than Islamic extremists?

Ooh! Ooh! I know this one! Because the deep state, i.e. the permanent power factions in this country, which includes and/or controls not only the “defense” industry but also the owners of mainstream media, is ultraconservative. O’Reilly is useful to them.

P.S. The Abattoir list isn’t a ranking: the freshest meat—I mean organ donor, ORGAN DONOR—goes on top, and everyone below shifts. Rest assured that we treat every donor with exactly the same care, concern and humanity with which they treat Uterus-Americans.

There was a short story I read back in the nineties titled The Hoffer Stigmata pandemic by Dan Simmons. It chronicles the onset of a disease that causes people to display, physically, the type of life they’ve led. So if you spent your life lying, cheating, manipulating and hating others, your body would display the shingles, bumps, rashes, and boils that were specific to certain types of behavior.

In the story, the protagonist says he was watching the news when the disease hit various journalists and talking heads, and what he describes is what makes this a Horror story. Some of the newscasters just exploded or devolved into little more than pink slime (specifically mentioned was Dan Rather).

Every time I think about Bill O’Reilly and how much I cant stand that man, this specific story comes to mind and I picture a quivering blob of ooze in place of O’Reilley’s face.